


[A]fter the fourteenth machiene war []

by Arcah



Category: NieR: Automata (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-04-25
Packaged: 2019-04-27 13:29:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14426403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arcah/pseuds/Arcah
Summary: Post Ending [E]Post the extra materials and plays----The cure to wake 9S up isn't working. So 2B waits for a miracle.---One shot, tooth rotting sweet fluff.





	[A]fter the fourteenth machiene war []

[A]fter the fourteenth machiene war []

Her screams echoed between the crumbeling concrete walls that once, long ago, had housed so many in a city bombed out and worn down by a never-ending war that had finally ended. For now.  
Unit 9S was not responding to treatment. Her metal carbon fibre compound skeleton fingers couldn't stop her tears from falling. After everything they had gone through- she had put him through, fate-... no, their POD's had granted them a second try at life, but he wouldn't wake. Not even the cure she had dug up out of the tower's ruined archives worked.  
\\\Personal Data Corruption is at 97%  
\\\Logic-Vaccines and comprehensive restructuring program success rate is negligable  
"SHUT UP!" She screamed through her tears as she cradled 9S's body in her tattered hands. "SHUT UP SHUT UP!!" She wailed thinly after pulling the boy's body to her chest, rocking him softly back and forth. Visual sensor cleaning agent streamed from her eyes freely.

\\\Unit 9S is non-responsive. PROPOSAL: Dispose of unit 9S

"SHUT UP!" Her grip made the metal alloy skeleton of 9S groan, startled she let go- but 2B felt her heart sink back into the dark abyss it had been residing in for the last weeks since her awakening. More visual sensor cleaning agent spilled from her eyes. 

\\\PROPOSAL: Unit 2B halts the needless waste of visual sensor cleaning agent liquid until supply is back at 80%, current percentage = 23.5%

A scream of dispair unlodged itself from her vocal system, chasing off the avian wildlife in a wide radius. This pain was worse. Worse then anything she had expirienced in her line of work uptil now.  
And she had expirienced a lot of said 'emotional distress' concerning unit 9S in the many years she had served YoRHa.

"Nines." She cradled him close to her, pressing her forehead to his and entangeling her fingers into his silvery hair. "Boot up-" She forced her voice to command him as she always had in the past.  
"-that, is an ORDER." She tried in vain to keep the emotion from her voice. It coated it thickly on the last word. Her hand cradled his cheek. "Did you hear me 'Nines'!" She felt her briefly held control slip.  
"I-.. I am your commanding officer" She attempted to steel her voice again. He had always listened to her. She knew she didn't need to- but perhaps-  
It was foolish and she knew it. No response came. "Damnit!" Thick sobs masked the word as she couldn't stop her tears.  
"You always came back- why not now?!" She spoke with a breaking voice to the sky as she cradled his head into the nook of her neck. "Now I won't ever need to follow those orders again-"

"- now we can finally remain together."

\\\1358 hours have passed without significant motor action. PROPOSAL: Initiate movement to prevent the deterioration of motor functions.

A2 sighed. It was a pitiful sight. She couldn't blame 2B. Not whilst she knew what she did about that specific Ex-YoRHa unit and her accompanying scanner unit. The fall-out of the war had been, somewhat anti-climactic for her. The network was gone. But the machines remained. And although their numbers were largely decimated in the amusement park and the forest, they weren't wholly exterminated. Likely neither were the other, likely dormant YoRHa stations.  
A2 had been on an archive hunt. Searching through what remained of the archives of the machiene network.  
Sooner or later, YoRHa was likely to return. But they would not be welcomed back. Exterminated was far more likely. For all the truths they knew.  
Though as it looked like, 2B truly wasn't intending on going anywhere. She still clung to the limp body of that boy, 9S. Whatever she had tried to resussitate him hadn't taken effect.  
Pity stabbed into her chest. But she elected to ignore it. It served no purpose, she couldn't really do anything for them anyway...  
So why did she keep visiting?  
She ignored her own inquiry and dropped off her 'care-package' of sorts. She had been scavenging the island all over to get a lay of the land, and a handy stash of spare parts.  
Anemony's resistance was still kicking, but barely. But she could not simply abandon these two to their shared fate.  
"Wake up soon, or you will rust." She spoke without looking at the two. "I'll leave this with you too. Perhaps you will be able to fix him and his broken heart. And else.. he'll be resting with folks he liked."  
She sighed deeply before staring to the setting sun. "I gotta go." She glanced over their intertwined bodies. "Take care.."

\\\1929 hours have passed since unit 2B has ceased all motor function, PROPOSAL: Initiate movement to prevent the deterioration of motor functions and allow dermal wounds to heal.

Her body felt like it was made of stone. Like that ancient king in the forest. Guarded by its faithful grave-keeper. Under a night filled with stars, she forced the servo's in her neck to cooperate to allow her to look up. She forced the servo's in her thumb to move as she stroked 9S's dirt streaked skin.  
"Why won't you come back...." Her mouth moved almost like that of a machine. Jagged and slow. "Can you hear me?..."  
"Nines.."  
It felt like her transmissioned speach did not even pass beyond his skin. So she forced her verbal circuitry to activate again after having burned it out with her cries many nights ago. "Nine-..s" Her voice croaked.  
\\\Unit 9S is not active and cannot process your verbal or short-wave radio transmissions.  
Her shoulders sunk just a little more. Her eyes became a little bit emptier.  
"Is there any way I can interact with him?"  
\\\Negative  
\\\Unit 9S's personality files have been locked and are not presently active or able to be activated.  
"Who locked them?" She turned to her POD with slow, grating movements. The desert wind had been blowing sand into her servo's over the past months.  
\\\Unit 9S himself.  
Grief quietly took residence in her expression.  
//Unit 9S suffered a devastating viral attack  
9S's POD spoke up for the first time in a long set of months.  
//Unit A2 purified him, but the residual trauma caused the locking of his personality files.  
"Is there no way to override that? To reach him somehow?" 2B inquired.  
//Negative, all options to do so have been exhausted approximately 1800 hours ago.  
Slowly, 2B rested her head on the forehead of 9S oncemore. She slowly pulled him close, then in the most gentle way- she pressed a kiss to his temple. 

\\\ALERT: High energy transmission detected.  
"From where?-" 2B's eyes had shot open.  
\\\Processing. ... . ... . ... . Point of Origin confirmed; Stadius Crater on the Lunar surface.  
"The moon?- what the hell-" She pulled 9S close. "Who is recieving this transmission?"

\\\Processing... . ... . ... Unit 9S

Her grey eyes gazed downward to the boy in her lap. "What?-" Her wide eyes gazed to her POD from 9S and back. "How? He is not active-"  
\\\ HYPOTHESIS: The lunar transmission is utilizing the method used to attempt to resussitate unit 9S by unit 2B  
"Jam it!" 2B forced her long stagnant body to cooperate, causing shoots of pain to run along her nervous tracks. But she had to move. "POD, calculate me a route to any underground access!" She nearly fell trying to keep her balance. "I won't let them take anything else anymore!" She forced her disobedient legs to move to the edge of the appartment building they had been resting on.  
\\\ALERT: This fall will damage Unit 2B beyond repair. Disengaging and utilizing alternate strategies is highly advised.  
"There is no time!"  
//Jamming ineffective, signal yield is too high.  
"POD, take him down and underground!" 2B's leg gave out and she ended up clining to the edge of the roof just as POD 153 took hold of 9S.  
//Warning: Cannot establish secure attachment to unit 9S for safe transport

Their rooftop had become a trap. As POD 153 released a shaky hold over the young android, 2B caught him in her shaking arms. Anger wormed its way around her iron-grip on her emotions. She was seething, trembling. Crying.  
"Why-.. Why can't you just leave us ALONE!" She cried out towards the pale white moon that hung in the skies above.  
//Warning: Increased activity detected in unit 9s's blackbox.  
2B's eyes had almost turned so empty they resembled the ashes left after the fire of her anger had passed. Shock ruled her now, along with a hollow sense of disbelief. After everything, their last chance truly was never ment to be...  
//Warning: Unit 9S's blackbox temperature increasing.  
All those promises. Those she had made to him. He had made to her, and she had made to herself. After having had a glimmer of hope, this defeat felt more crushing then anything else.  
//Warning: Unit 9S's blackbox temperature is continuing to increase. Approaching maximum tolerance in approximately 25 seconds.  
With pain firing along her nervous circuitry, she moved herself to lay beside him and wrapped her arms around him.  
//Warning: Unit 9S's blackbox temperature is reaching critical.  
He was warm now. At last. She closed her eyes and pushed her cheek beside his.  
She wouldn't leave him again.

 

 

 

 

 

//. ... . ... . ...  
//... . ... . ... .  
//.. . ... . ... .  
//Sy... . ... ste  
//.e... . ....boo  
//s... . .ccess..

'Why?.. Why am I awake again?-' His sense of self had returned in a flick of a switch. As if he had gone to sleep and had just woken up without hitting the snooze button. Yet nothing else seemed to work.  
His most recent memories were a mess, and whatmore he found signs of having been hacked when he began to explore his own software and programs. Stuff was really messed up. But he did not feel like sorting it out, unlike his past self he just wanted to go back to this state of non-existance he had been in.  
'My reason to be here in this damned painful world is gone. It is pointless.' He smiled mirthless. A smile of shattered glass. 

But in order to dissapear again- he'd have to fix at-least some of the mess that was himself. Drifting through his own world, he noticed his body was strangely enough having it's arm again- but he disregarded that fact only a moment later. What use was having his hand back if he never planned to use it again? He briefly sorted through his system file until he happened upon one of the issues keeping him from entering his blisful non-existant state. A filled up transmission buffer.  
It'd be easiest to just purge said buffer. But after staring at the option for a good fifteen minutes without being able to motion himself to act, he issued a command for all noise and junk data to be deleted. That aught to fix it as well. He was a scanner model, his transmission buffer always tended to max out fast.  
Only when his console told him his command had been executed- he discovered the issue hadn't been solved. In the least.  
In fact no single message had been cleared by that command. Yet he still did not wish to purge it.  
Because he had kept some of HER transmissions in there. As a keepsake. But those few could hardly be responsible for filling out his buffers. So then what was?  
Curiosity won from non-existance.

 

"Nines."  
Her voice startled him as he had initiated playback. It brought a pained smile over his lips, paired with tears. Had he recorded her finally calling him by his nickname?  
"...Nine...s"  
No.. there was a discrepancy in the tone, and tempo. He decided to play back another.  
"Nines." "Boot up- " "-that is an ORDER!" "Nines" "Did you hear me?" "Why won't you come back?"  
Her voice. Confusion held a duet with fear, and the mournful yet worrisome ballad that was its result had 9S feel like he was going crazy all over again. He held his ears as the buffer turned out to be overfooded with data which was now pouring out at random.  
"Where did this come from?-! What kind of trickery is this?!" He panted but dug into the buffer itself- only to find the one name he couldn't believe to be real.  
Tears mingled with madness as he both cried and laughed as he tried to cope with a heart that howled in pain.  
"Make-... make it stop-" He plead. "Make this pain stop- please" He did not know to whom he was begging.  
//Affirmative.  
That was his POD, with wide eyes 9S was realizing now that his systems were booting up. "No- No NONO! POD stop- do not reboot my body- I have seen more then ENOUGH of that world! I DON'T want to go back!" Anger spiked to hide his hopelessness.  
//Negative. Your previous order carries precidence.  
"TO HELL WITH IT!" He screamed with terror, more then with anger.  
//NFCS & FFCS unoperational. Central nervous network is activating. Activating external and internal sensors. Normalizing black box temperature output.  
"STOP!! MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOPMAKEITSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTO-||

 

//Chemical olfactory sensor activated.  
He smelled wet earth.. and the subtle smell of androids leaking hydraulic fluids.  
//Vocal and Radio/Laser communications offline  
His scream did not continue from hacking space into reality-  
//Visual sensors recalibrating, standby.  
A blur of shapes became visible. He couldn't even move his head.  
//Audio recording sensors activated.  
He heard the wind. And the grating of something on the stone he figured his body was laying on.  
//Tactile sensors activated  
Yep, he was laying on stone. But not just stone.. he felt something else touch his face. Something-... soft. And a bit tickely and something wet...

Something was.. trailing along his jawline?...  
Something was holding him..  
Pulling him closer-..  
...-and speaking.  
//Linguical processes have been suspended, restoring the processes to normal functions. Standby  
The voice sounded... angry- and familiar. But he forbade himself from driving himself any more crazy then he probably already was. She was dead. She wasn't coming back.  
It took only one word to shatter that frail conviction that resided within him.

"Nines!-"

No translation or linguistical processes or protocols had been neccisary for him to understand that one word.

"Nines-" HER voice spoke.

"NINES!" the voice called as his eyes had lapsed open. His face had abandoned its restful expression from the last months to be filled with shock.  
He was gazing at her with eyes filled with equal parts shock and pain. Tears were streaming from his eyes, his jaw moved but no sound nor transmission of any kind she could pick up.  
Shaken, her hands- or what was left of them cupped his cheek before feeling her own tears spill. "Finally-" Her voice threathened to snap. "You came back-" Her whole being trembled as she moved closer- and closer and closer.  
She gently wrapped her arms around his still motionless body, and pulled him into her sheltering embrace before becoming unable to hold back her emotions any longer. Her tears, of relief, escaped her grip and swallowed her whole. Her whole body shook as she coddled 9S in her arms, and almost crushed him in her embrace.  
One by one his senses finally adjusted into focus. He could hear her internal fuel pump- he felt the radiation of her blackbox like a gentle breeze on his synthetic skin.  
He SAW her. And no amount of denial in the world could win from his desperate desire for it to truly be her. Gratingly his vocal sub-unit came back to life before his transmitters did- causing him to utter a chattering and chocking scream.  
Her hands cupped his cheeks, she was crying. Calling him- over and over and over and over.  
"Nines"  
"...wo-..b-" His vocal sub-unit chattered out from slightly ajar lips. 

The look in her eyes was one of pure light.

//Unit 9S, has the pain ceased?

 

Having surpressed these emotions for so long caused her to feel utterly overwhelmed, if not scared by them to a degree. But right beside her was the one person causing them. The one and only person she'd ever felt these emotions for. Cherishingly slow she picked the still limp body of 9S up and locked him tightly in her arms and off the cold ground. She stroked her worn to the frame fingers through his hair, lovingly enduring the pain caused by her raw nerve ending.  
No pain had ever felt so sweet.  
Especially when she felt his body begin to shake, and his arm to stiffly move to return her embrace.  
"2B" His broken voice box uttered. "2- B.." a noise laden sniff followed by sobs followed. It roused her own tears- and before they knew, the pair, entangled, lay together on a desolate rooftop.  
Crying..  
Crying in sadness  
Crying in undulated joy

Crying in pure relief.  
And neither intended to let go of the other for any time soon.

\\\PROPOSAL: Unit 2B should find an oppertunity for unit 9S to undergo maintenance. Emotional distress and loss of visual sensor cleaning agent poses risk for unit 2B and 9S maintenance costs.

"Fix yourself-" 2B spoke soft as she ceaslessly stroked through 9S's hair as she kept his head locked to her chest. "I promise I will remain with you."  
He really did not feel like it- he knew it had been over thirty-six hours since his re-activation- his POD liked to remind him. But he truly did not wish to go anywhere, not even into his own hacking space.  
Not whilst every stroke of 2B's fingers through his hair, or over his skin, or the humming of radiation from her blackbox was healing his fractured and pained self bit by bit. He languished in them.  
As selfish as he knew it was. As childish as he knew it was. 2B understood, her ministrations never ceased.  
He couldn't turn his eyes away from her. He did not want to leave her prescense. Was he scared?  
....Dead scared.  
... . ... . ... Absolutely terrified. If she left- if this was all a madman's dream he'd break beyond any fixing.

 

He was terrified. Almost child-like. He wouldn't even enter his own hacking space to sort out his likely jumbled systems. He could still barely move, or talk.  
Yet she couldn't fault him. Not with how she had frantically knocked out half of her own systems and destroyed part of her own weaponry to find a cure for him.  
"I understand" She spoke soft, as no response came to her earlier suggestion. Gently she kissed his forehead. Why- she did not really know why. It was an old human custom several resistance androids had taken a liking to. But it felt good.  
"POD, is there a way for me to directly interface with unit 9S's personality software?"  
\\\Conferring with POD 153.  
She softly brushed circles with her nose over 9S's forehead. Her tattered hands ever tightly held him close to her.  
\\\Affirmative. Direct interface possible.  
"Direct Interface?" 2B wondered.  
\\\Affirmative. The feature was banned under former YoRHa rules to prevent the leaking of classified mission intel. Current status of YoRHa command allows for this block to be overridden.  
2B's brow scrunched slightly. "I never heard of this feature before."  
\\\It is a remnant feature of previous YoRHa model designs. Largly fallen into obscurity. To initiate the direct interface, align prefrontal cortex modules of units 2B and 9S.  
Without further words, 2B cupped 9S's cheeks and moved her forehead to his. "Like this, we can fix you together." She slowly closed her eyes. "POD, initiate the interface."  
\\\Affirmative

He was lurched back into his own hacking space, and despite his own attempts to keep calm, he freaked out when he could not see her.  
"2B!!" He turned around like he was chased, and with that confronted with the incredibly sorry state his own hacking space was in.  
"2B!!" He called out before spinning another circle. "POD show me where my direct interface port is located-" He tried to master his building panic and dread.  
No answer came.

\\\Connection established

"2B!" 9S looked almost worse then his body did as she saw him when she loaded into his inner-world.  
"Nines" She tried to let herself smile. What had been years of trying to master these emotions, of keeping her distance, of stifling her smiles made this smile hard to keep. Despite it being as genuine as could be.  
Despite this place being entirely digital, his embrace felt every bit as real as it did in the real world.  
"I told you I would come to help and fix you, didn't I?" Whether she could ever bring back the warmth she used to have in her voice when she was first paired up with him, she doubted with pain in her heart. But she tried to ignore the long-trained habit of stripping her voice from emotion.  
"You are a mess. We need to get you sorted." She spoke as she pulled him close into her arms.  
Almost reluctantly, Nines nodded against her chest.  
"Y-Yeah-..I guess." He shook in her arms.  
"..."

She let the silence last.  
"..can-.. can we just- stay like this for a little?" He asked on a soft, almost muted voice.  
2B took a little to answer.  
But when she did, she did so by sitting down, and forcing 9S to as well. Granting his request because in truth she needed it just as much as he did.  
"We can, Nines."

"Thank- you.. Thank you 2B- ... . ... . ... for everything."

 

He was a mess. She was a mess as well. On being urged by their respective POD's, they began work on sorting out 9S's systems. But the work was slow. The rests and cherished embraces, the tears and the mountains of unsorted emotional data weren't about to just let them work on mindlessly anymore.  
Nights where 2B only monotonously stroked over 9S's spine happened as he could do nothing but cling to her. Yet progress was steadily being made.  
When they finally returned to their physical bodies, they found the both of them covered in a powedery white substance. In fact the whole world around them had gone white with it, and it drizzled sowly down in little flakes from the stormy grey skies overhead.  
"What is this?" 2B shook her head and brushed it off her damaged to hell velvet black sleeves.  
"That is snow 2B, it means the seasons have turne-" 9S stopped mid-sentence. "2B!- What happened with your hands?!" He fished up her other hand out of the snow and held them in his own. Most of his motorfunction had returned now.  
"Ah" She had truly forgotten about her own condition. "That is from digging."  
"Digging?!" 9S stared and turned them over gently. "Yes. For a cure to get your personal data to boot up."  
She saw his shoulders sag a moment. Until he looked up to her. "I'll fix you- We can grow skin-grafts and fix you. I will fix you 2B" Determination shimmered in his eyes. 2B found herself carrying a modest but absolutely genuine smile.  
"No one knows your maintanance like I do! We need to gather materials to-"  
"9S"  
Interrupted he gazed back to her, he had stood up without even noticing. 2B looked up to him.  
"Thank you."

He smiled. Bashful and happily. "Just you wait 2B"

She couldn't move her legs. Internal diagnostics pinned her leg sub-units temperatures at somewhere quite a few degrees below zero. Bad hydraulic circulation being the cause. But staying here was no option. Their new life awaited and she had made a promise to stay with him.  
\\\Warning: Unit 2B's plan is inadvisable  
"How do you know what I am planning POD?" She asked without too much intrest as she gestured 9S to stand aside.  
\\\Predictive subroutines and built in learning heuristics.  
"Then you should know that unles you have a better option, nothing wil stop me." She transmitted to her POD. "POD, Initiate POD PROGRAM: LASER on minimal setting, manual targeting."  
\\\\... . ... . ... Initializing.

The blast scared the hell out of him. "2B!!" He jolted to her. The smell of signed fabric filled his olfactory unit. "It is alright 9S" She laid her hand on his shoulder and shifted a portion of her weight onto him as she forced her right leg to move and stretch.  
It was no pretty sight.  
"2B your legs-"  
"- were frozen solid. This was the best means to restore operation." He wrapped his arm around her to support her as she struggled to move her left leg.  
"Exactly how long have you been sitting like this?!" 9S asked as she finally succeeded and stood like a new-installed machiene.  
\\\2031 hours

It took him less then a second to complete the math. "You sat there for almost three months-"  
She was calibrating her balance controls as she looked up.  
"Yes."  
When she saw how 9S had fallen silent, she turned towards him with a lot more stability and cupped his cheeks before lifting his face and meeting his forehead with hers.  
"I got you back for all those days of waiting. It was worth it."  
Her worn down fingers wiped away the tears that formed in his eyes as she pushed her forehead to his. 

"Lets go home Nines."  
He swallowed and turned to scan his wide surroundings. "Where? The Bunker is gone-I can't sense the resistance's prescense. Pascal is-... Where do we go?"  
"We go wherever we want to. We are free."  
As the concept brushed by 9S, 2B found the carepackage left by A2 a long time ago. Including a spherical object clothed in a carry sack. She picked up both and tied them over her shoulders so they could not fall.  
"We are-.. Free. No more YoRHa.. No Humans left to protect. No more orders- no more battle-" He looked up to 2B for confirmation. She nodded softly.  
"We determine our own path from here on out." Her eyes held 9S's as she reached out her hand to him.  
"... 2B" 9S took her hand in a heartbeat. The significance of the gesture only grew more as she offered him her other hand as well.  
"I do not want our path's to separate ever again, Nines."

The snow and the cold, all the nacent pain and horrific memories, this singular moment made all the suffering worth it, for he answered her words from the deepest depths of his self.  
"I want to be with you 2B. That's- s- all I ever wanted-" He tripped over his own words as they welled up from inside him. He clenched her hands in his own. 

His genuine words drove a bitter-sweet steak through her core. She hardly felt like she deserved this, to have her selfish wish granted. At last.  
"It's-.. a promise" She spoke with her own voice carrying a warm sliver of emotion.

"It's a promise" 9S whimpered as both parties fell into an embrace.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in one go without a spellcheck (becauseIamlazy)  
> Also, I kind of found out in the middle of writing that the world is tidally locked. So I skipped that fact right now. If I don't post it right now I likely never will.


End file.
